Index aims to guide adaptation investment

Jon Christianson in AlertNet: Channeling private investment toward climate adaptation will be crucial to supplement public funds and raise the tens of billions of dollars needed each year, say the authors of an index intended to help guide that investment and highlight investor opportunities.

The Global Adaptation Institute (GAIN) Index, launched in 2011 and updated this month, evaluates the vulnerability of countries to climate change and their readiness to withstand its impacts, based on a wide range of data, from efforts to control corruption to variations in crop yields.

The data and rankings are intended to provide a factual base for public and private investors to make good decisions about where to most effectively invest money, according to Juan José Daboub, a former managing director of the World Bank.

“The goal of this is try to bring everyone to the same table,” said Bruno Sanchez-Andrade Nuño, GAIN’s director of science and technology. According to Nuño, all of the data and formulas used to draw GAIN’s conclusions can be found on the site’s website....